Satiating
Ahhhhhh…. I just finished all seventeen pages of John Siracusa’s review of Leopard, Apple’s new version of the OS X operating system. There is something really satisfying about a Siracusa review, like a having Thanksgiving dinner for the brain. After finishing that I just want unbuckle my belt and watch a football game. I have Leopard pre-ordered from Amazon, but having selected the free shipping option I’m now stuck waiting for a few more days. Sigh.
Technorati Tags: technology
My Software Curse
One way I drive myself crazy is that I’ll buy a computer game I’m interested in, only to completely lose interest in it soon thereafter. I can think of a couple of extreme cases where I only played the game once. (One of these days I’ll fire up that copy of Railroad Tycoon on my shelf.) Thank God for demos.
Apparently this extends to other products, since I purchased ecto, a very nice blogging client, and lately I just haven’t had the same interest in blogging. Maybe I can attribute it to summertime, when I had lots of outdoor activities on my mind. Well, now it’s the first day of October, so let’s see if I can do any better in the fall.
Technorati Tags: technology
WiTricity – Wireless Electricity!
This story in the Boston Globe amazes me; the lede:
The latest technical advance out of MIT could dramatically change the drudgery of recharging portable devices: An MIT research team has figured out how to wirelessly illuminate an unplugged light bulb from seven feet away.
The reporting is far less technical than I would like to see, and the only explanation I see is that the researchers use “a carefully designed magnetic field to deliver power to such devices from a range of 10 to 15 feet.”
It is of course well known that magnetic fields induce electric current. You may have seen electric toothbrush chargers that can charge through the plastic waterproof casing, requiring no metal-to-metal contact. They work by generating an electromagnetic field through the casing, inducing current flow within the toothbrush to charge its battery.
Maybe I’ll update this as I read more about it. Obvious questions that come to mind:
- How do you charge efficiently? My understanding is the little inductive charges in toothbrushes aren’t very efficient, which is tolerable because they don’t use much power anyway.
- How do you prevent major side effects from occurring, either if something comes in between the charger and device, or if the field spreads out farther than desired. A magnetic field powerful enough to transfer substantial amounts of power could really do some damage. You would think any metal object in the vicinity could become electrified, not to mention people with pacemakers.
Pretty amazing technology, if it ever becomes practical.
Technorati Tags: science, technology
Digital Privacy
Today Apple began releasing DRM-free music, which naturally engendered much commentary in the blogosphere. I thought there was an interesting post and comment thread over at The Unofficial Apple Weblog.
The post makes an interesting technical point about the DRM-free songs: the digital files are still embedded with the customer’s name (and possibly other unknown identifiers). Although there are no technical restrictions on copying, doing so might allow a copyright-holder to identify the source of a file uploaded to a peer-to-peer network, for example.
What isn’t clear to me is whether there is simply a name and account number embedded, or if there is more extensive watermarking.
The comment thread unfolded somewhat predictably, but well illustrates the different perspectives people take on intellectual property. There were two main perspectives:
1. Ominous Privacy Threat: People from this point of view found it unwelcome that music files could be tracked to an individual purchaser. This perspective has two subtypes: those who might want to engage in illegal file sharing, and those who see embedded metadata more as a general threat to privacy.
2. No Worries: Many commenters were more sanguine, observing that the only privacy “threat” was to people who break the law by illegally sharing files.
As is common for online discussions, there were many bad analogies and misinterpretations. For example, a commenter made a comparison to government wiretapping, sardonically adding “if you aren’t doing anything wrong, then there’s nothing to worry about.” This, however, is not really comparable, since wiretapping is an intrusion that may occur without you doing anything illegal or wrong, whereas you need to publicly share your downloaded music files before anyone can finger you for breaking copyright.
As a straight point of logic, I think the No Worries camp has the better of the argument. Those people placing higher value on privacy or anonymity can probably find a way to strip the metadata, or convert the file to other formats, and it’s understandable that Apple would choose to embed the customer’s information considering how reluctant the music industry has been to give up DRM.
But there are some Big Picture questions that I think merit addressing:
1. Tracing as a Point of Law: Many people reacted by pointing out that tracing is only of concern if you are breaking the law; their implication is that an embedded name and account number are sufficient proof that you illegally shared the file.
The trouble is that digitized intellectual property is “leaky” compared to tangible property: there are many, sometimes fairly innocuous ways a file can be illicitly shared. Most obviously, hardware on which IP is stored can be stolen (especially iPods or laptops). Less obviously, network permissions are often set too loosely allowing others to access files without your knowing. And sometimes other people have physical access to your computer (think about all the traffic going through a college dorm room). That a digital file with your name on it has leaked out doesn’t necessarily mean you shared it.
When you buy something physical, like a big screen TV, you own it, and enjoy the benefits of ownership as well as the costs of protecting your property (installing locks on your doors, burglar alarms, insurance, etc.). When you download music, you don’t enjoy the same benefits of ownership; technically all you have bought is a license to play music. If you don’t get the benefits of ownership, it seems dubious you should bear the costs of protecting the music on behalf of the record company.
2. Slippery Slope: Apple’s putting your name in a music file you downloaded is not really so monstrous. Many commenters noted Apple has always done so, although I find that objection irrelevant because only now is the music being touted as unprotected. But I agree it’s not such a big deal.
In the long run, however, we have to realize that as the digital paper trail follows more and more of our actions (and purchases), liberties we previously thought we had will become ever more constrained.
That’s very abstract so let me give an example. Let’s say GPS tracking technology keeps dropping in price, and more car manufacturers begin installing them in vehicles. They realize, however, that drivers who drive over the speed limit put more wear and tear on their cars. By linking GPS data to another database of speed limits, they can find if you are exceeding the speed limit and thus truncate or void your warranty. It’s easy to see why insurers and police agencies would be interested in such data as well.
You don’t have anything to worry about unless you’re breaking the law, right? Well, most of us do periodically commit minor infractions of the law. How many of the people insisting enforcement of IP is no problem always come to a complete stop at stop signs, never disobey the speed limit, never used alcohol before the legal limit, or never experimented with drugs? Probably not many.
And of those who do follow the law to the letter, but “made mistakes” in the past, are they willing to confess to the police and accept a citation — or prosecution — for breaking the laws they purport to believe in? Probably not many at all.
But we can ignore that with a wink and a nod, because no one’s going to know about it; no one’s going to do anything about it. There’s no way to prove it — yet.
We should be more honest about lawbreaking. It is not such a shameful thing, in of itself. It depends on the law. With that in mind, the discussion over intellectual property hinges on what sort of lawbreaking you are willing to stomach. File sharing is illegal, but I’ve known many people who are not otherwise criminals who don’t see a problem with it. Perhaps they are wrong, but perhaps the law is wrong. I don’t want to get into a detailed argument about IP — this post is verbose enough.
But I do want to stress there are going to be many more of these seemingly minor bits of information tying our identities to things we might prefer to keep private. Any one item, like this one with Apple, will seem minor and tolerable, but what is the cumulative effect? Eventually almost anyone can be prosecuted for one infraction or another, and who actually is prosecuted will be at the discretion of those in power.
Anything Goes Here
Much as I’ve enjoyed some of the technical articles at O’Reilly.com, Tim O’Reilly’s idea for a blogger code of ethics strikes me as a really dumb one. In fact his initial “draft” proposal generated so much criticism he had to backpedal (which is what I’ve linked to), but unfortunately he did not give it up.
A “blogger code” cannot work because a blog is fundamentally about individual expression, so each blogger will interpret the code in his or her own way, rendering the code meaningless. The code idea is intended to provide some measure of standardization, analogous to the Creative Commons copyright license, but since bloggers will have varying interpretations it won’t help them avoid having to set a policy.
The analogy to intellectual property is inapt because people vary infinitely in how they will react to certain words and expressions, but vary much less in how they want to protect their work. Intellectual property licenses lend themselves to standardization; “acceptable speech” does not.
O’Reilly backpedaled and asserted there should be “modular axioms,” designated with icons, instead of a blanket code of conduct. While that is a slight improvement, it fails to recognize the difference between words and actions: a blogger can put an icon in the sidebar, but that icon has no meaning whatsoever unless the blogger enforces it exactly as described — and more likely than not, bloggers will still vary in their interpretations of what is acceptable and what is not.
For the code to work, then, bloggers must cede their independence to the central code-making authority. A blogger cannot be allowed to stain the good reputation of the code by failing to adequately enforce the rules (either not enforcing them, or enforcing them selectively). It is this possibility that has agitated so many people about the code — the possibility of a schism on the web with a cartel of “approved” dominant bloggers setting the standard for what people are allowed to say.
I haven’t felt the urge to blog in a while, but reading O’Reilly’s post irritated me to no end. It’s written in a bland and bureaucratic style, like a corporate press release or CEO pseudo-blog (er, maybe that’s what it is?). He says, “I’m not a big fan of political correctness,” but he is promoting political correctness, orthodoxy and conformity in a major way.
I’m all for civility, but sometimes you just gotta say “fuck that.”
Technorati Tags: code of conduct, O’Reilly
Citizendium Launches
Citizendium, the new competitor to Wikipedia, launched yesterday. I admit to some skepticism about this project. Clay Shirky had some cogent criticisms of its structure with which I’m inclined to agree, and one of his commenters made the amusing point that because Citizendium has an open license, if it produces such superior articles Wikipedians can simply reproduce them on Wikipedia. But it deserves a chance; whether it succeeds or fails it will be an interesting experiment.
Nevertheless, Larry Sanger really shot himself in the foot choosing such an awkward name. It is clunky to pronounce and, I just found, clunky to type as well. I actually think Wikipedia sounds kind of euphonic, and I get a kick out of telling people about cool stuff I’ve found there. Not so much with Citizendium. I don’t think I can type that again today!
Technorati Tags: citizendium
Web Fads
Suddenly the tech blogs I read are all over the growth of Twitter. It’s basically a service you can use to nag your friends via IM or SMS about what your having for dinner, how long you’ve been waiting in line, and such minutia. I’m providing a description so that, in case I look over my archives a year from now, I’ll know what it was.
Reading about Twitter brought to mind a recent research indicating younger people are more narcissistic than ever. That research and my thoughts on Twitter made me feel somewhat curmudgeonly, and I recollect, as a Usenet veteran, feeling similarly dismissive about blogging when it first took off. (And yes, I’m aware of the irony of publicly writing about my feelings while complaining of others’ narcissism).
I’ve seen defenders of Twitter note that blogging had nay-sayers predicting its demise. Yet blogging offers value as a medium for complex, substantive expression (even if not everyone takes advantage). It also serves as a substrate for other new media like podcasting or video blogging. Twitter doesn’t seem to offer much of anything besides the “thrill/obsession of pre-adolescent voyeurism,” as Mat Balez puts it.
Voyeurism isn’t just for adolescents, of course, and occasionally it can be interesting to see a little slice of someone’s life. I think there’s a certain charm to Radley Balko’s shelf blogging, for example. But if he blogged about every minor D-I-Y project it would get tedious really fast. Everything in moderation.
I’m with Jeff Ventura in thinking Twitter needs to transform itself into something useful if it’s going to have staying power. Five years from now, presumably the world will be even more thickly networked than it is now, with more powerful, more portable and cheaper hardware, so it’s not implausible a service like Twitter could find a role beyond amusing web geeks. And with people having so many different means by which to make contact (cell phone, SMS, IM, email…) a technology that can reach anyone by whatever means they choose to listen could possibly thrive. But count me cautiously pessimistic for now.
Smart(er) dust
Engadget reports on RFID “dust,” 0.0025 square millimeter 128 bit tags. Imagine how ubiquitous they will be in 20 years.
While there are legitmate privacy concerns, I wonder if they could be used to help eliminate some of the externalities commonly believed to require government intervention. For example, factory pollution is often adduced to show how a system based on Coase bargaining could not work in large part because you can’t tie particular particles to a particular factory, so can’t argue the factory owner is “trespassing” in your lungs. But suppose so many ppm of the factory’s pollutants are required to have microscopic RFID tags. Air sampling downwind of the factory would test for compliance. You or your doctor would detect the tag, passing the information on to your insurer or other surety organization, which would negotiate with the factory for an acceptable price of polluting your lungs.
The “Big Brother” concerns about RFID seem to have more to do with the possibility of the government spying on and tracking citizens. These fears have less to do with the technology than with the concentrations of power already inherent in our society.
Wind Farms
The New York Times reports on a wind farm controversy in rural Virginia (the Times requires free registration).
Returning for a moment to my earlier post, I mentioned Coase bargaining without explaining it. It refers to the Coase Theorem, which (roughly) says that, were it not for transaction costs, any definition of property rights would be efficient because people would negotiate until externalities are eliminated. One can view externalities simply as a consequence of high transaction costs. These costs prevent the full extent of negotiation that would be needed to reach an efficient outcome.
In the New York Times story, a wind farm, while environmentally attractive, has raised concerns about aesthetics, noise and light pollution (the turbine towers are tall enough that they require beacons to warn aircraft). The solution, per Coase, would be for the wind farm owner to bargain with affected parties to reach a solution that compensates for the nuisance of the turbines. Assuming the wind farm can still be profitable, it can then be constructed. But there may be a lot of people to bargain with; there may be holdouts. It is hard to identify who is really affected, and who is merely claiming to be affected in the hope of a payout.
In my example of factory pollution, the RFID-tagged dust particles emitted by the factory could be traced to a particular factory, and people afflicted by the factory’s pollution would be distinguishable from people with unrelated afflictions. This would greatly aid in reducing transaction costs — all victims do not have to negotiate with all polluters and vice versa.
Noise and light pollution and aesthetics may be trickier because they are more subjective. And there is still the problem of too many parties at the bargaining table.
A class action suit is one possibility, but this seems less than ideal. A tort system is needed when breaches of rights occur, yet the ideal is to have an efficient system of rights in the first place, where lawsuits are the exception, not the norm. It’s better for two farmers to have two clearly defined plots of land where each can grow his preferred crop, rather than share one plot and constantly sue each other when they get in each other’s way.
A better solution is for an intermediary to negotiate with the factory to a mutually acceptable compromise. Government is often proposed as such an intermediary. Government is a monolithic enterprise, not terribly responsive to the varying preferences of different people within its territory. For instance, people will have different tolerances for risk, and different interpretations of harm, as seen in the New York Times article. Perhaps, with the aid of technology, smaller, more responsive organizations could fill the gap between government defining rights for everyone, and individuals having to negotiate all of their rights.
